‘A giant collage’ of mass shootings: Stage Left’s ‘the (same) incident’ sheds light on America’s indifference to gun violence

Chelsea DuVall lay on her bed folding laundry while listening to NPR. What she heard frustrated her – another program reflecting on mass shootings on college campuses in previous years, such as the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University in 2008.

DuVall was a student at Northern Illinois University in 2008. She remembers how the student bodies of Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University were connected in their shared grief and shock over the violence and loss they had experienced within a year.

Now it was 2012. DuVall had started her studies, but these stories were still being told over and over again while the rest of the country was still processing what had happened. DuVall said she was “frustrated by the absurdity of the repetition.”

She studied acting at the California Institute of the Arts and independently studied playwriting under her mentor Douglas Kearney, an actor, playwright, librettist and poet. Kearney was the first to ask DuVall if she had ever considered creative writing, and that spurred DuVall to express her frustrations in a new work called “The (Same) Incident.”

DuVall has developed the play in workshops over the years, most recently in 2022 with the Spokane Playwrights Laboratory, a nonprofit organization led by Dahveed Bullis.

Unfortunately for “the same incident,” the COVID-19 pandemic deprived the play of the opportunity to be performed live. But the play’s fate took a new turn when Jeremy Whittington, Executive Director and Artistic Director of Stage Left, approached Bullis about directing the play.

The combination of the play’s heavy subject matter, its abstract form, and the high level of technical direction required made the task intimidating, but Bullis felt too immersed in the play to turn down the challenge.

“Honestly, I’ve lived here my whole life … I don’t think I’ve ever seen a production like this,” Bullis said.

“I would definitely describe it as sociopolitical experimental collage theater,” DuVall said. “When I step back and look at these mass shootings around the country, I see a giant collage. They’re connected, they overlap, they’re all in the same space, and yet in some cases they’re unique because the lives lost are unique.”

“The structure isn’t necessarily completely linear. There are some linear elements, but we move in and out of storylines, just like when we tune the radio or flip through the channels.”

Bullis worked closely with the technical elements of the piece, which were critical to emulating the sensory overload and overconsumption that many Americans experience due to the 24-hour news cycle, which is more accessible than ever thanks to today’s technology.

“The video projection, the lighting, the sound – this piece is sonically wild, both in terms of digital sound and real sound,” Bullis said. “The set itself is a lot of screens and colors and things flashing. The costumes are one of the most unique things I’ve ever seen.”

The characters are deliberately written as archetypes, striking a balance between anonymity and the possibility of identification.

“Not many people know who these victims are,” DuVall said. “And I think archetypes also speak to the idea that it’s everyone. … It’s not just about school shootings. It’s about mass shootings.”

“Many people go to the movies. Many people go to grocery stores and McDonald’s, and many people go to college, and many take their kids to elementary school. So an archetype speaks to this idea that it could be anyone, someone you know.”

And everything flies by. The piece itself only lasts about an hour.

“I believe in giving people really good, focused content, like a slap in the face, and then they leave,” DuVall said. “So it’s not a long-term commitment for people to come, but it’s an emotional and energetic commitment.”

Bullis said the piece was quickly received by audiences.

“It’s almost like scrolling through a TikTok feed so fast that you suddenly realize, oh yeah, all of this happened,” Bullis said. “This show is intense, but it’s also fun. I mean, there’s so much happening that it’s kind of like an intense rollercoaster in the sense that you’re like, wow, all of this is happening.”

Although its form is fleeting, the piece is intended to make waves among audiences.

“I think people will feel the need to talk after seeing this. And I think that’s the purpose, especially for people affected by the pandemic,” Bullis said. “We understand that there needs to be a conversation now.”